In general, firmware changes less frequently than other software components of a computing device. This fact, coupled with the risk involved in updating existing firmware due to its foundational nature, has retarded development of firmware update tools in comparison to tools used to update software components such as operating systems and user applications. Conventional firmware update tools require a computing device to execute a specialized boot process to update device firmware. As part of this boot process, a central processing unit (CPU) of the computing device reads, prior to executing existing device firmware, a firmware update and writes the firmware update to a storage location identified as storing device firmware. After the firmware update is stored to the identified storage location, the CPU can execute the updated device firmware as part of further boot processing.